The RPG Death Spiral

The next game farm chat session is going to talk about the RPG Death Spiral.

The death spiral is the effect in many games where if you become injured you are less effective and more likely to be injured again. This can lead to a situation where the first wound is the most important as the character first wounded is most likely to lost the overall conflict. Also this spiral effect is not always to do with health, hitpoints and death. One of the best known RPG spirals is the insanity spiral introduced in the Call of Cthulhu game – once you started to lose your sanity the harder it was to remain sane and the more likely you were to continue to lose sanity.

In many games the death spiral is specifically desired to make combat or confrontation to be more dangerous and deadly. In other games specific features are put in place to lessen or remove the effect of the death spiral.

On Jan 8, 2010 we will be meeting to discuss this effect and how it can be used and manipulated in game design.